the 50th anniversary of both the March on Washington, held August 28, 1963, [and] the integration of Guilford College. The event honored Lead March Organizer and gay Quaker civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. The aim of the symposium was to uphold Bayard Rustin’s practices of breaking walls of class, gender, sexuality, race, ability and any other obstacles. “Not just Guilford, but pretty much everybody has a problem of starting to be very single-issued,” said Associate Professor of Political Science Maria Rosales. “Bayard Rustin and the Bayard Rustin Center really emphasize that people have really complex identities, and that you really need to keep that in mind.”

The film also focuses on those same complexities, delving into the purpose of intersectional organizing. Jess discusses her experience of screening the film before and during the conference:

Jess St. Louis speaks to the audience at during a screening of All of Us North Carolina.

“It was powerful to show people the film the day before and during the 2nd Annual Bayard Rustin Conference at Guilford. I was pretty involved in All of Us NC in Greensboro, and most of the people I know at the school heard about the work that we were doing as All of Us NC – but most of them were not involved in the work – so it felt personally important to share it. One of my personal highlights of the screenings was the first screening, on Friday, where a student who came to an All of Us NC workshop at Guilford and got involved with on-campus efforts against Amendment One and she got to learn more about what the bigger picture strategy looked like, the people who were involved, and more. And to show the film the following day, as one of the final parts of the conference before the keynote, to students, staff, faculty, and community members, was a beautiful opportunity to share it. The conference itself was powerful, as it was organized primarily by queer and trans people of color, many of the workshop leaders and topics focused on the intersections between queer liberation and racial justice, alongside other forms of oppression; being an active part of a queer space that centers queer people of color and provides a ground for queer anti-racist practices, visions, and power. As a white queer and trans person who spent four years at Guilford, in the past year and a half, it has been powerful and important to see that the Bayard Rustin Center has become not only the LGBTQ space on campus, but an LGBTQ space that is centered on LGBTQ people of color; and it has, and I believe will, be a space for transformative change and education that not only shares stories such as All of Us NC’s, but works to develop the leadership, vision, and practice for intersectional queer and trans organizing and movements going forward. Guilford didn’t have that when I came, and through the work of Martha Lang and Parker T. Hurley, among others, it exists. And it means a lot for all of our communities on campus, but I’m excited, and hope, for white people who are queer and trans at the school to be a part of the Bayard Rustin Center and deepen their commitment to queer and trans liberation by working with people to make racial justice a reality as well. And I think that the film is important and powerful because it shows this kind of work happening outside of the Bayard Rustin Center, in the state that we live in, and that intersectional queer anti-racist feminist organizing has and will continue to happen, with the purposes of transforming society.”

The conference, organized by Parker T. Hurley, Beatrice Franklin, Emily Peffer, and April Parker, was held at the Bayard Rustin Center at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and ran from April 26-28, 2013.

Quote

“All of Us NC moved me deeply and gave me an instructive tool to help social justice activists understand that progress comes in many legitimate forms. Watch it to learn how to squeeze the best results out of attack and loss.”
– Rinku Sen, Executive Director of the Applied Research Center and Publisher of Colorlines.com

Donate

Please consider donating to this project. With small donations of $10 or more, we can create more content and curriculum. Check out the About page to learn more about where this project is headed. Donate

Contact

Sowjanya Kudva
sowj (at) sowjfilms (dot) com

I am a queer, South Asian filmmaker who believes that well-made, self-representative media is key to building powerful queer communities.

I would love to hear from you! Please feel free to contact me at sowj (at) sowjfilms (dot) com if you have questions, comments, or you want to bring this film to your community.